Why we're not releasing a bunch of new stuff this summer like we have for the past several years.

Updated July 18, 2019

Every year for the past 5 years we’ve released a big update to the Safe Zone Project on our birthday as a present from us to you. This year, when we were chatting about what we would create and release as part of our “Birthday Update,” we realized a lot of things that might be useful to share with the community.

Here’s the short version: We aren’t releasing anything (yet) for our birthday. Instead, we’re sharing the why behind that decision.

The conversation below was copied from an SZP Slack channel, where SZP co-creators Meg Bolger & Sam Killermann were revisiting potential ideas for the release. We decided to share it with you (lightly edited — some capitalization, grammar, etc.) so you can see what we’re talking about, and what we’re thinking about:

sK:

So, the other day we were talking about the birthday release, and a bunch of things came up. What do you think we should start with?

Meg:

I think probably the thoughts on updating the curriculum. And why this year is different than in the past.

As we were talking the other day the biggest difference between this year and years prior is that we’re not facilitating the SZ curriculum as a service anymore. So it’s hard to have a pulse on what changes are needed, what’s coming up in workshops, etc.

sK:

Yep yep yep. And the other difference is that every year the curriculum is getting closer to being solid — at least we hope that’s true — and not needing huge, overhaul-y updates (other than tweaking language/cultural/zeitgeist stuff)

Meg:

That’s true. Honestly, I hadn’t really thought of that until you said it the other day, but of course, with the more you improve a thing, ideally the less and less overhaul-y updates.

But it does make the whole “we do a big update every year” harder to make good on. Definitely one of those “good problems to have”.

sK:

Yeah, and it would be easy to update it just for the sake of updating it, but we don’t want to accidentally make it worse. Which brings us back to the “we’re not doing lots of SZ trainings any more to field test things” dilemma.

We used to test every change we were considering making tons of times before we put it down in writing (I’m thinking of DOs/DONTs, Queer Umbrella, etc.) to make sure it was something that would work in most settings, with most groups.

There are still (small) things we know we wanna improve in the curriculum, but we’re going to have to rely on community input/feedback for any big overhauls or improvements.

Meg:

Right

sK:

Which brought us to talking about feedback?

Meg:

Yep.

Our perpetual struggle!

Honestly, if I was an outsider looking in I would definitely assume that people email us on a regular basis with their thoughts and feedback, especially considering just the volume of people who touch the site. But one thing that has been just as consistent as the flow of people every year has been the amount of feedback we get which is…supa tiny.

sK:

We got one yesterday!

Meg:

That was so exciting. I truly can’t believe that came in right as our conversation was ending. thanks universe + human who wrote us.

And it was super useful to boot.

sK:

But your point stands. The more people we have using our curriculum (I think we’re past 35,000 now), the smaller the percentage of those folks who give us feedback gets, and it was never even a solid 1%. Now we’re down to fractions of a fraction of a percent.

So we were thinking we could use the birthday release to do a big “Want to give us a gift? Give us the gift of constructive feedback if you’ve been using our curriculum and have something to share!”

Meg:

Yep

Which I was really excited about. Because feedback would be such a gift because (as we said before/earlier) we’re not facilitating the curriculum anymore, so feedback is the touchpoint that we have to the people who are actively facilitating.

But one of the things that came up was what type of feedback would be likely to receive and could we use it to actually change the curriculum,

sK:

What type do you mean?

Meg:

Type as in the ‘flavor’ of feedback, or like what would the feedback be pointing at or speaking to.

The ones we came up with I think were like people encouraging us to change the curriculum so that it reflected more of the social justice dogma, facilitators struggling to respond to those pressures, big changes or additions people would want to see reflected in the curriculum… there might have been a few more.

sK:

Ah yeah, and we also talked about getting a lot of feedback we’ve already heard (because when we do get feedback, it’s often from people newer to the work or earlier in their SZ facilitation experience, who are encountering things we already encountered, and haven’t made the same mistakes we’ve made yet), and feedback that we haven’t heard, but would require a bunch of testing to see if it’s something we’d recommend or not (which, as we talked about above, isn’t something we can easily do any more, without offering SZ trainings as a service).

Meg:

Right.

And as we were laying all this out we saw a few categories of likely feedback (a) feedback that we would be likely to get but that we’ve already considered (b) feedback that would be big changes we wouldn’t want to implement without testing first (c) feedback that relates to social justice dogma in some way.

The A & B we can’t make good on. And the big thing with the SJD feedback is that we realized it would probably be more useful to ask about that specifically right?

sK:

Yes, and we weren’t sure if it was something we wanted to ask about, or invite, because it would mean that we (SZP) are entering that conversation. While you and I have personally be talking about “social justice dogma” for awhile now, we’ve largely kept the SZP out of it. (Something we can talk about here if you want?)

But just focusing on the feedback part, if we had to guess what percentage would be A and what would be B, we assumed they’d both be small, and even if it was all A or all B, there wouldn’t be a whole lot we could do with that feedback at this point.

And it started to feel like we might be wasting our Birthday celebration to send 20K+ emails to people for — what would likely amount to — little to no real benefit for the curriculum, the SZP, and all of the people using our resources. And! Most important! The participants in the rooms of the people facilitating using our curriculum.

We realized that we wouldn’t be following the advice we give in Train-the-Trainers: only ask for feedback that you’re going to utilize.

Meg:

Right. So that really took asking for A & B feedback off the table and lead us down the “should we enter the SJD conversation” part of our conversation.

Do you wanna go into that part or want to go somewhere else?

sK:

We might as well. After all, we started talking about it because we kept noticing it come up in the SZ train-the-trainers we were facilitating.

Meg:

And in the most unexpected locations!

We definitely anticipated some SJD stuff coming up in our last few train-the-trainers but I think one of the most clear examples that I remember was from someone who was in their like 40s/50s in rural MI, so I think it’s probably safe to assume if it’s popping up there it has the potential to pop up everywhere.

sK:

Yeah, it’s not just limited to the “most progressive” urban centers.

For me, it feels like a lot to bring up within the SZP context, because we know how overwhelming the challenge feels for so many people to simply facilitate a safe zone training.

So us saying, “Also! Make sure you don’t reinforce dogmatic ways of doing social justice, this amorphous but pervasive trend we’re noticing in tons of activism spaces that you probably don’t even have a name for but are definitely feeling pressured by.” feels like a bit of a leap.

Meg:

“amorphous but pervasive trend” is definitely an accurate and intimidating description.

Yeah we didn’t really get into that the other day but it’s true. It’s probably one of the first things we’re discussing bring into the SZP that would possible feel like increasing the difficulty, imitation, etc. people feel around facilitating SZ workshops, not less. Our whole site is basically dedicated to the “you can do this, you got this,” and this would be one of the first things that might decrease that feeling rather than increase it.

Which makes it really different from things we’ve done in the past and is definitely off-putting. Even tho, to be clear, I think it’s really important, it’s just really different (and not in fun ways).

sK:

Totally agreed. What did we get into the other day re: SJD and birthday release?

Meg:

We talked about auditing the site. Kinda going through and reviewing the content (activities/curriculum) with SJD lens to see what new thought we would have.

We talked about creating a kinda short write up sharing some thoughts from the audit with folks.

Did we talk about doing those for the birthday release? Or just that we could share we would be doing them?

sK:

Oh right. The idea was that we’d announce we’re doing it — that would be our big birthday announcement: we’re going in this new direction, and we’re going to look back through everything we’ve created and released in this way.

Meg:

Right.

Which would be a big thing to announce, at least for us it would be really committing to a new direction. Which I was about to say would feel like a really “political” move, as if our site isn’t super political already. As we always pointed out in train-the-trainers. It’s in 🏳️‍🌈 for a reason.

sK:

Lol yes.

The tricky thing about SJD is that it’s primarily controversial within the social justice / LGBTQ+ equity / progressive movement, whereas everything else we do is less controversial amongst our peers (but super political/controversial amongst more moderate-to-conservative people).

Meg:

Indeed.

sK:

And we didn’t want to do that, right now, just because we felt like we had to do something big for our birthday? That felt brash.

Meg:

It felt brash. We talked about maybe asking for feedback specifically around SJD stuff before announcing it (I think), but most of all I think we concluded we should give ourselves some more time to think about it.

sK:

Okay, so we talked about the big “give us a present of feedback” birthday release, and talking about the SJD elephant in the room. Were there other things we were considering?

Meg:

Even tho it was just the other day, amazing how hard I’m having remembering.

We talked about doing a 5.1 update, and how that wouldn’t likely feel like a good enough reason to send an email.

We have those online courses in the works, but those works are gunked up by the whole “SJD” thing.

And the Spanish-translation curriculum has been held up by the feedback thing.

Dang — I’m just realizing how hilariously connected this all is.

Meg:

Dude, it’s true.

I definitely know how consciously stuck I’ve been feeling by SJD stuff in making new content. I can’t even imagine how it affects me on an unconscious level.

sK:

Ditto.

And we probably wouldn’t have talked about all this stuff if not for the birthday release, which we’ve always loved as an annual deadline that pushes us to be creative and make new things (the good part of the pressure we feel, that we’ve 100% created for ourselves).

Meg:

the meta birthday gift!

sK:

lol yes. THANK YOU SZP BIRTHDAY FOR GIVING US THE GIFT OF YOUR BIRTHDAY.

Meg:

It is good though. Because if we have both been (un)conscious feeling stuck, esp by the SJD thing, it’s good to have to talk about it, to have to air it out.

I think one of the things that’s interesting is how many good ideas, or ideas that seem good right off the bat, when we talk through often have huge pitfalls. Its really cool in lots of ways, though from the outside it looks like nothing has changed.

sK:

Yeah, it’s hard to “publish” a thing we didn’t create for good reasons, or because we thought through it all and decided it might do more harm than good. You can’t make a non-thing.

Meg:

Hence this conversation I guess!

sK:

yepppppp so one last try: is there something we can/should/wanna make and release for our birthday this year?

Meg:

*thinking*

So since our conversation, I haven’t had any new ideas. I think it feels more clear to me that doing the SJD audit and with it a ‘some of this stuff is 6 years old now, does it still make sense’ overhaul would be a really good idea. Something worth doing.

But in both cases I don’t feel clear that that is necessary to send as an announcement to the list. Which is what we’ve done every year. So while there is part of me that wants to have something to send out, another part thinks it’s okay not to.

And that maybe it’s okay to send a big update after the audit. Even if it’s not on our birthday.

sK:

I think we could totally do that, especially cuz we do have some small updates for the curriculum we want to publish, and we don’t want people to think we’re abandoning improving the curriculum (if they’re expecting a big “new version” release).

Meg:

when you say “do that” you mean send a release update to everyone after we do the audit along with sending them the v5.1 curriculum?

sK:

yeah, or v5.2 or 5.3 or whatever version we’re on at that point.

Meg:

I think that sounds good.

I think also it is likely that the audit will have impact on the curriculum and would be cool to be able to update folks on that too.

sK:

forsure

I really like that idea. Should we publish anything on the site about any of these plans?

Meg:

Honestly, I’m down with publishing this convo, I think for the uber-curious, people who are into seeing behind the scenes, etc. could be interesting.

Plus there is part of me that is always excited about the annual blog post 😉

sK:

You wanna publish it as it? Or like write up a summary of it?

sK:

Lol yes! Our super-relevant at-least-once-a-year-updated blog 😊

Meg:

“Welcome to the SZP blog, it’s like the opposite of Seth Godin’s.”

I say as is. You?

sK:

I’m down! I mean, assuming we edit it.

sK:

“Welcome to the SZP blog: it’s like finding a flyer on a billboard on campus that’s for a Y2K party”

Meg:

…no, like finding a flyer for last year’s new years eve party

sK:

yes, better. We’re not THAT out of touch.

sK:

And, of course, we still wanna get feedback about the curriculum! (In case anyone is listening 👀 )

Meg:

Yes!

So not sure this is relevant information but I copied and pasted this convo and it’s about 2500 words (including all the “sK 1 minute ago”) things

Meg:

numbers make things sound important

sK:

Oof. Well, we can trim it down if we need to. We need to figure out a good way to post it to the site.